July 18, 2007

Study: Taking A Break In Middle Of Workout May Metabolize More Fat

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Several studies have examined the relationship between exercise, rehabilitation and quality of life in cancer patients and reported positive findings, and being overweight or obese is known to substantially increase one's risk of dying from cancer. So cancer patients and non-patients alike indeed have an interest in getting the most from their exercise by maximizing their ability to metabolize fat. And according to a recent study in Japan, taking a break in the middle of your workout may metabolize more fat than exercising without stopping. In their study, researchers compared two exercise methods - exercising continually in one long bout versus breaking up the same workout with a rest period. Their findings suggest that many of us change the way we exercise:

"Many people believe prolonged exercise will be optimal in order to reduce body fat, but our study has shown that repetitions of shorter exercise may cause enhancements of fat mobilization and utilization during and after the exercise. These findings will be informative about the design of [future] exercise regimens," said lead researcher Kazushige Goto, Ph.D. "Most people are reluctant to perform a single bout of prolonged exercise. The repeated exercise with shorter bouts of exercise will be a great help [in keeping up with fitness]."

This finding is part of a study entitled Enhancement of fat metabolism by repeated bouts of moderate endurance exercise, found in the June 2007 edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology, which is published by the American Physiological Society.